Recipes for Recovery

In early May 1995, Margie Lewis sat on a bench at the Delancey Street
Foundation, a residential education center for addicts and ex-convicts
in San Francisco, awaiting intake. Until that moment, her life had been
defined by institutions—teenage years in the California Youth Authority
and long stays in jail as an adult. Enrollment in the program was her
last chance—her only alternative to the life sentence that would
otherwise be mandated by the state’s new “Three Strikes and You’re Out”
law.

Lewis was filled with optimism. At Delancey, she saw no paid
professional social workers, no guards, and little bureaucracy. Instead,
the place was run by dozens of people like her, who had been in and out
of prison and came here to recover. “I was nervous and excited, sitting
there,” said Lewis. “I felt like there was a possibility things could
be different this time.”

Delancey's residents learn, often for the first time, that they have value and can make and do things that are of value to others.

In San Francisco, Delancey Street, now celebrating its 40th year, has
quietly built a model program that has kept thousands of addicts and
ex-offenders from landing back in prison. It isn’t just a treatment
program—it’s an all-hands-on-deck community that recognizes that
everyone, even an addict or ex-convict, has a skill to offer others. At
Delancey Street, you don’t just go through treatment; you are put to
work helping those around you rebuild their lives.

Lewis, who had only completed her G.E.D. a few months earlier while in
county jail, was tasked with teaching others how to do the same. Former
addicts also help their peers kick their addictions. Recovery sessions
happen in groups, led by people in recovery themselves. “You hear about
yourself from people who know you,” said Lewis. “They are your mirrors.
Your peers understand the things in your life you have tried to forget
through drug use.”

Residents also learn at least three marketable job skills through
Delancey’s business enterprises—run by ex-offenders. They work at one of
many ventures such as the on-site restaurant, the moving company, the
Christmas tree sales lot, the landscape business, or the digital print
shop. The enterprises supply roughly 60 percent of Delancey’s funding.

Breaking the Prison Cycle

Before entering the Delancey Street program, Margie Lewis was facing a "three strikes" life sentence.

Photo by Lane Hartwell.

California is second only to Texas in
the number of people in its prisons, according to the Pew Center on the
States. The state experienced a prison construction boom after decades
of laws that lengthened sentences—even for nonviolent crimes. A report
by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office shows that, in its first
decade, Three Strikes flooded more than 80,000 new inmates into the
prison system, many for petty drug possession.

At the end of most sentences is a revolving door that leads back to
prison. The formerly incarcerated return to the outside with few of the
resources they need to survive—no job, no place to live, and no support
network. About two-thirds of those released from the California prison
system return there within three years. The cost of maintaining a
bloated prison system has drained the state budget. California expects
to spend $9 billion on corrections in its 2011-2012 budget, and has had
to wrestle with a deficit of more than $25 billion by cutting health
care and social services. The human costs of a correction system that
tears apart families and communities are even greater.

In contrast, Delancey started as a tiny economic investment that
produces giant returns—in the form of recovered ex-addicts and ex-felons
who become healthy, contributing members of a community. Delancey’s
founder, Mimi Silbert, grew up in a poor community on the Lower East
Side of New York, the daughter of European Jews. “As the years went by, I
began to see people who didn’t get out of the ghetto, and who by a hair
turn, ended up in prison,” she said in an interview with Southern
California Woman Magazine.

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James Ludwig, left, and Leland Stanful work in the Delancey Street auto shop. Program participants learn vocational skills at business ventures run by residents.

Photo by Lane Hartwell for YES! Magazine.

Silbert, who holds dual doctorates in criminology and psychology from
UC-Berkeley, teamed with John Maher, a former addict from the South
Bronx. In 1972, the year after President Nixon declared the “War on
Drugs,” the two drew from their family backgrounds, naming their project
after a New York street known as the starting point for new immigrants.
Delancey Street began with a thousand-dollar loan and has since charted
a new path in addiction treatment—challenging drug abusers and
offenders to take maximum personal responsibility within the context of a
community of support and mutual aid.

Delancey Street opened its first home in the former Russian Consulate
building in San Francisco. Its main headquarters is now in a four-story
complex on the waterfront in the city’s South Beach neighborhood, with
housing and retail businesses, including a restaurant, outdoor café, and
bookstore. By the mid-1990s, the organization had opened branches in
Los Angeles, Calif.; San Juan Pueblo, N.M.; Greensboro, N.C.; and
Brewster, N.Y. In 2007, Delancey began renovations on Norman Rockwell’s
historic home in Stockbridge, Mass., and now runs a treatment program
there. Each branch shares the same basic model but offers training to
match the local economy. In rural New Mexico, residents can learn
wastewater treatment and livestock management. In Stockbridge, they can
learn stagecraft and study the performing arts.

Most importantly, Delancey’s residents learn, often for the first time,
that they have value and can make and do things that are of value to
others. And Delancey’s approach to treatment confirms that compassion
and respect can be more fiscally sound than the dehumanization and
punishment that happens in the prison system.

Delancey Street resident Saul Valencia at work in the kitchen.

Photo by Lane Hartwell.

Delancey Street’s success has turned heads and won respect from experts
and leaders all over the world. Former President Bill Clinton sent his
drug czar to San Francisco to consult with Silbert. Its board of
governors includes influentials such as former Secretary of State George
Shultz and Senator Diane Feinstein. Delancey has trained people in 450
cities in 48 states and 25 countries and is helping groups in South
Africa and Singapore launch similar treatment programs. It has worked
with the California Department of Corrections on policy changes to help
keep parolees out of prison and in community service programs and helped
San Francisco write a master plan to reduce crime among youth. It has
also started a program inside San Mateo County’s jail based on the
Delancey Street “each one teach one” philosophy. And a number of
Delancey Street graduates have started their own treatment programs
based on the model they lived and worked in for years.

In Service to Each Other

You don’t have to have a past like
Lewis’ to get into Delancey. You can just show up for lunch. Delancey
owns and operates a renowned waterfront restaurant at its South Beach
location.

An impeccably groomed maître
d’ greets my girlfriend and me, his tattoo peeking up over his collar.
Looking around the room, I notice members of the city’s political elite
seated near a mother with three small children, and next to her, a group
of electrical workers on lunch break.

All receive the same respect from
the waiters—who seem just a little nervous, like actors on opening
night of a play. The food rivals anything offered farther up the
Embarcadero at the foodie bistros and take-out carts. Our waiter returns
several times to confirm that my ahi tuna sandwich is cooked perfectly.

No one at Delancey Street, whether a dishwasher or the executive
director, receives a wage. Instead, they receive housing, treatment, and
food. All money generated from Delancey Street’s enterprises is
returned to keep the program running without government funding. At
first this took resident Sean Cronk by surprise. “I asked ‘Who is going
to control us?’ In prison, I was used to having guards make all of my
life decisions for me!” Instead, he answers to peers, ex-offenders like
himself.

Delancey has graduated more than 18,000 people—bringing them, as they
see it, out of “America’s underclass into society as ... citizens living
decent, legitimate, and productive lives.” More than 10,000 of them
arrived illiterate and have gone on to receive high-school equivalency
degrees. Delancey’s alumni go on to a wide range of careers—such as
firefighter, carpenter, and graphic designer. The organization relies on
its graduates to come back, counsel, volunteer, and train the new
arrivals. “At Delancey, we’re responsible for each other. We’re based on
the idea of family and community. We’re not really a business,
institution, or even a program,” said resident Brett Crawford.

After graduating from Delancey, Margie Lewis founded a nonprofit called
Into the Solution, based in Oakland, Calif. The group helps formerly
incarcerated people find affordable housing. “It’s what you learn at
Delancey. You have to give back what you have been given. It’s a
lifelong commitment for me to help people who are in the same situation I
was in not so long ago.”

Interested?

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James Tracy wrote this article for Beyond Prisons, the Summer 2011 issue of YES! Magazine. James is the co-author of the forthcoming book Hillbilly
Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing
in Radical Times. He is a longtime economic justice organizer in the San
Francisco Bay Area and works for Community Housing Partnership.